


Mosaic

by flowerdeluce



Category: LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (Cartoon)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Memory, Turing Fest, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:08:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24825079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerdeluce/pseuds/flowerdeluce
Summary: Zima learns who he is through the perspectives of others.
Relationships: Zima & His Creator
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9
Collections: Turing Fest 2020





	Mosaic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Koraki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koraki/gifts).



> Thank you to asuralucier for beta reading, encouragement, and for being willing to consume canons just to help me out. You're the best <3

Zima learns who he is through the perspectives of others. It isn’t that he doesn’t know. He did once, centuries ago.

His memories begin on Kharkov VIII. He doesn’t blame the neurosurgeons for their inability to transfer his biological memory to the systems some say make him more machine than man. Those memories would’ve been there for a while, but that was so very long ago, and clearly, he hadn’t thought them worth storing via alternate methods at the time.

The decay of biological material is a universal experience. Neurons and engrams stored in the fleshy wrinkles of a human brain last one hundred and fifty years, give or take. Transferring memory has never been an infallible science, but the intricate procedure is commonplace now, much simpler than it was back then.

Rather than mourning what he’s lost, Zima likes to call himself a collector. He collects every scrap of information he can find about himself, his work, his life, wherever it might be scattered throughout the galaxy. This cobbled-together jigsaw has a single corner piece from which he builds the bigger picture: an article in a magazine.

The pages of the physical document were digitised and archived at the Great Library of Mars alongside a trillion others that might mean something to someone, someday. It was a simple listing, square, squeezed between others promoting classes for creative writing, art supply stores, and private tutors.

Zima: Portraits  
Private view: March 19  
Open to public: March 20 - 26  
Contact Thorne Gallery (Palo Alto) for details

In Zima’s mind, the exhibition was the first thing he ever did. His personal history begins at the moment he must’ve first conceived of booking gallery space and selecting pieces to display. There may not be anyone living who attended that exhibition, who can tell Zima things the advert can’t, so he makes his own investigations.

■ ■ ■

**The Answer in Her Hands: The Story of Maritza Malone**  
Claire Markham, Martian Chronicle

When we hear the word Zima, we think of a colour: a cold yet vivid aquamarine. For generations, we’ve tried and failed to define the artist and visionary known only as “Zima” beyond that recognisable shade that once complemented and now dwarfs his work.

Zima’s huge-scale installations attract audiences from the farthest reaches of the universe. The man behind their design remains as mysterious as that blue shade enmeshed in our collective consciousness.

For Maritza Malone, the mystery of Zima is a deeper, more personal one.

Maritza crossed paths with Zima on Lahil IV in 2509. She was buying a net of lapplefruit from a street vendor, pressing her fingerprint to the reader, when Zima’s shadow darkened the vendor’s stall.

“It was my hands,” Maritza tells me, as I ask her to describe the scene of their first meeting. It’s a memory she’s revisited countless times, and it’s never less thrilling, she says, than her last replay. The fingers of her left hand drape her knee, mirroring their pose in the framed portrait displayed in pride of place behind her—an original Zima, Maritza claims.

“He walked up to me and grabbed my wrist, his eyes fixed on my hand. I was frightened at first. The sunset is green on Lahil, and it made those scale-like sections on his skin look like millions of tiny faces cut from an emerald, and I’d never seen such focus in a person’s eyes before. I dropped the lapplefruit and he picked them up for me, apologising.”

Following that first meeting, Maritza was persuaded to return to Zima’s estate, where she would stay for three weeks to model for him. She describes the modelling process as relentless, sometimes posing for fifteen-hour stretches at a time. While Maritza required breaks for sustenance and rest, Zima’s implants and cybernetic modifications meant he never tired.

“He posed my hands in strange arrangements, like my wrists were stems and my fingers petals. He dressed my hands in gloves and jewellery. He’d paint them from far away, incorporating them into a larger piece. Sometimes he’d view them through one of his optical filters that allowed him to replicate my fingerprints exactly on the canvas, turning the loops and lines into abstract worlds. My hands became his obsession.

“Sometimes he looked like he might just, break down. He’d stare at my hands, that relentless focus in his eyes, for hours at a time. That was scary at first. Then I got used to it, even anticipated it, because he came out of those trances with a fresh energy. He’d sketch and paint so fast his hands were a blur.”

When Maritza was asked to leave, Zima gifted her a portrait, the one that now hangs behind her in the lounge of her humble home not far from the street market where that first meeting took place.

Many find it hard to believe that Zima would return to the humanoid form in his art—however briefly—after centuries devoted to galaxyscapes and atmosphere-breaking installations. Others suggest Maritza’s story is a cover for a romantic relationship between herself and the great artist. Maritza refutes this.

“Zima’s interest in me, and the time we spent together may never make complete sense, but I’ve never doubted that his interest was platonic. The portrait,” she says, gesturing towards the forcefield-protected painting, “was the only one he made featuring my face.”

Those who believe Maritza’s story to be false base their assumption on several factors, mainly that Zima himself has not responded to questions about their fleeting relationship and has never offered to authenticate the portrait. No sketches of Maritza’s hands have emerged either, despite her claim that hundreds were created.

The conspiracist’s most damning piece of “evidence” however, is that Maritza refuses to share any of her hard-stored memories involving the encounter, an action that would prove without a doubt that her claims are genuine. I ask her about this.

“It’s a very personal memory,” Maritza says. She appears uncomfortable addressing this topic. “Zima didn’t ask me to keep our encounter private, but I feel this is the one thing I can’t share with others.”

She turns to look at a glass bowl of lapplefruit on the table beside her, her long black hair covering her face for a moment. She’d offered me one when I arrived, and as I replay our meeting to pen this article, enhanced visuals show the stickers on their purple skins bear the same name as that market stall where she and Zima first met. It makes me wonder what more could be gleaned from Maritza’s memory record if only she was prepared to share it.

I thank Maritza for her hospitality and take one last look at the portrait.

In it, Maritza’s right hand reaches out to the viewer, dominating the canvas, as though trying to grab something just out of reach. I wonder if Zima was trying to do the same when he stumbled across this plain, kind-natured woman in the sandy surroundings of the Lahil sector.

What did Zima see in Maritza’s hands that inspired him?

How many others like Maritza are out there, brief models of the man whose name is synonymous with artistic excellence?

And, like the enigmatic blue, will Zima ever reveal the reason behind this momentary obsession?

Maritza’s book: _The Master’s Model_ , is now available for direct transfer.

■ ■ ■

The rows of leafy plants and bulbous succulents in Zeynep’s greenhouse are a striking contrast to her white hair. Her hair, like the rest of her, is a bold statement about how she chooses to live—or die in her case. Every living thing is dying, she tells Zima, when he asks why she allows herself to age and perish. She says it as though reading a well-worn script recited until it loses all meaning.

“I stopped upgrading my implants over three-hundred years ago,” Zeynep continues, leaning against her cane. “When the software breaks, so will I.” She studies Zima’s face for a reaction. “It is shocking to most, I recognise that, but it is my choice.”

Turning to her plants, her expression lightens. She strokes the striped leaf of a Calathea roseopicta in her wrinkled hand.

“I consider myself lucky to have one,” she says. “A choice, I mean. If I forget to water this plant, it’ll wilt and die. It relies on me.”

Zima lowers his gaze and studies the plant. “But, if it were free to grow in the wild, would it not survive?”

“Perhaps,” Zeynep says with a weak smile. “Probably, yes.” She gestures with one hand around the vast, humid space. “Does that make these plants my prisoners?”

Zima thinks it does. Upon his arrival, Zeynep told him she’d brought these plants from Earth when she left for this colony. Many of them were already cared for by herself and her late husband, Hans, who also came to this planet to die. The rest she uprooted from the few green spaces left, because she couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing them again.

Instead of answering, Zima turns the conversation to the reason for his visit. “Do you really remember nothing about Palo Alto?”

Zeynep shakes her head. “When you contacted me, I didn’t even remember making that recording. I’ve watched it a few times, but I barely recognise myself.”

The Reminiscence Project has that effect on many people. When Earth’s humans made a move en masse from biological to digital memory, there was a period of adjustment. The biological memories that couldn’t be backed up slowly decayed while those stored on physical chips were forever as crisp and clear as when lived. Zeynep, along with thousands of others, had joined the Reminiscence Project, a charity preserving biological histories through alternate means. She had been a resident of Palo Alto for many years before the earthquake flattened it. That connection alone prompted Zima’s visit.

“There is one thing, actually.” Zeynep points her cane to the far end of the greenhouse before reaching up to take Zima’s strong arm, letting him lead her in that direction. “You mustn’t tell anyone about this.”

“I won’t.”

They reach the end of the greenhouse’s aisle. The glass, clouded with condensation above, has dripped small puddles onto the dirt floor. Zeynep is careful not to step in any of them.

“An ancestor of this bloom hailed from Palo Alto.” She draws back the large leaves of a fern to reveal a potted rosebush comprising of four blue rose heads. Not Zima Blue, but close.

Zima blinks. He cycles the spectrums in his visual sensors to ensure no filter deceives him. Something about this flower . . . fascinates him. It is not the colour. Somehow, he has seen this very rose before, perhaps in a dream.

“Hans worked as a keeper at a graveyard in Palo Alto,” Zeynep continues. “Do you know what a graveyard is?” Zima nods. “One old gravesite was covered in these blue roses. He took one and gifted it to me, having not a clue that roses like this don’t grow naturally.”

“They don’t?”

“Perhaps on other planets,” Zeynep says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “And perhaps nowadays, but not back then. We tried to find out who planted them, but the grave was so old and the records long lost. The rest were probably destroyed in the earthquake. We decided to keep our cuttings alive as long as we were, and to this day I’ve never seen another rose grow in this shade.”

“Then these plants are not your prisoners,” Zima says, still captivated by the bloom. “You have given them a chance at life.”

Zeynep smiles. “Yes I, I suppose you’re right.”

■ ■ ■

“Let me know if I can be of assistance,” the blank-faced AI says.

It slides over to the viewing chamber’s door, its holographic elements flickering as it moves. The effect is done well, even if the raw projection tracks are visible in the ceiling. It’s like the rest of this place: well-constructed but with little aesthetic value. Disappointing, seeing as a visit cost more than the sale of two of Zima’s most sought-after works.

It took months of searching to find this piece in his jigsaw, and there’s no guarantee it will fit. The clue is in the personal effects of a former resident of Palo Alto. Zima is about to view them in person rather than on a digitized list. Well, as close to in person as the viewing facility permits.

Objects of this age require specific storage conditions, so the items themselves are carefully sealed in class-one-thousand cleanrooms following decontamination. Replicated copies, that can be touched and examined in a viewing room like this one, are available at a price to whoever wishes to see them.

A high percentage of visitors to viewers are academics. Archaeologists. Historians. Genealogists. The rest are the wealthy elite who hope viewing something ancient might inject some excitement into the banality of near immortality.

Zima is here because of a dedication written inside a printed book.

Archive reference: 998-456-12A5-V13K  
Title: The Cambridge Photographic Atlas of Galaxies  
Published: Earth, 2148  
Curator’s notes: Dedication to “Zima” from “Bella”

Izabella Brown, Zima has learned, was a cyberneticist who lived and worked in Palo Alto before the earthquake. She relocated to Santa Fe and died relatively young and childless. The contents of her laboratory and home were saved by her assistant. It would have cost a considerable amount to preserve Miss Brown’s belongings in a viewer, so her assistant must’ve cared a lot for her.

It’s interesting that none of these items have been viewed by anyone in the near five-hundred years they’ve been here. According to the public register, Zima’s was the first request made to view this material.

He chooses the book from the selection screen, and it coalesces on the glossy ledge before him.

To Zima  
Hope this inspires you!  
All my love,  
Bella

That’s all it is. There are no pieces of paper slotted between the pages—perhaps containing names, addresses or photographs— and no bookmarks nor dog-eared corners. It’s hard not to be disappointed, but Zima has already prepared himself for this. He’s also prepared to sift through every item here.

It’s easier to cycle the contents of Miss Brown’s lab using the screen. The items appear as crisp rotating images he can swipe through, and when he wishes to see them in more detail, they appear on the countertop. There are some that require no additional scrutiny than the screen offers: assorted lengths of wire, soldering equipment, nuts and bolts.

Zima feels the AI watching him. Even if its eyes are hollow, its presence remains unwelcome.

When he turns back to the screen, a plastic box full of decrepit computer chips rotates slowly. On its side, painted in neat black script, it reads: “Great-grandma’s things.” Surrounding those words are several blue flowers. Doodles really, all similar in design, but Zima is sure they’re meant to be roses.

“How are the physical items accessed?” Zima asks the AI. “Not copies. Real. Do you understand?”

The AI’s holographic face tilts a degree. “Yes. They are not accessible.”

Zima clenches his fist against the screen and nods. He will take this higher.

*

The plastic box with roses painted on its side contains eighteen rectangular computer chips, each about the size of Zima’s thumbnail. He has fashioned an adaptor capable of retrieving whatever information remains on them, if any, and transferring it to the kind of file he can beam directly into his memory bank. Sitting cross-legged on the cleanroom’s floor, chin resting on his hands, he ignores the android—real this time, not holographic—standing watch.

Due to Zima’s exterior construction of hermetic polymers and his absent lungs, he is the first non-machine allowed inside the cleanrooms. His universal fame and acceptance of the large entrance fee helped gain him entry also. They’ve still taken the precaution of dressing him in coveralls and making him enter through an airlock, and he was scanned thoroughly for contaminants, too.

The data adaptor blinks when it’s time to swap the chip for another, and before long, Zima loads the last one into the slot. He’s handled each of them with extreme care. Every object stored in the mile-long rows surrounding him has been essentially frozen in time since it was first archived here. Kept in zero gravity, with no exposure to light or humidity, not one speck of dust has touched them in hundreds of years. Even if these chips are nothing but dead ends, it’s an honour to be in the presence of history.

When the adaptor makes its final blink, Zima doesn’t wait. The transfer is instantaneous.

Surprisingly, the files read like any other memory replay, transporting him to the moment they were recorded.

■ ■ ■

Just above the Earth’s atmosphere, a long structure that looks like a bowling alley or a giant airstrip orbits the planet silently. Zima’s craft hangs in space beside it, waiting for the tractor beam to bring him and his cargo inside.

He thinks it’s best to bring Izabella’s belongings here. She left everything to him in her will, and her colleagues claim that’s ridiculous, because Zima isn't _real_. They’re greedy. They want her things for themselves, but they shan’t have them.

When the steward asks his name, Zima gives a false one.

■ ■ ■

When she squints, Izabella looks like her great grandmother. She’s hunched over her lab bench, working on one of the many miniature machines she’s brought to life over the years. Zima passes her a glass of her favourite iced tea and a plated sandwich, and she thanks him with a smile.

■ ■ ■

The shaking in the earth feels all wrong. Zima feels it before the humans do, and there almost isn’t time to shelter Izabella beneath his chest plate before the walls crack and fall in on themselves.

■ ■ ■

Zima’s first artwork blends the real and the artificial. After countless months of trials and failures, he finds a way to genetically alter a rose: Zandra’s favourite flower. The resulting shade is blue.

He plants five of them at Zandra’s grave.

■ ■ ■

The gravestone is made from a slab of shiny black granite with veins of white running through it.

Zima hadn’t been allowed to attend his creator’s funeral, so he’s here now, alone, a brief visit while he isn’t needed for odd jobs. Other mourners have left flowers on Zandra’s grave, though most are dry and wilted now. Rain has left the writing on the notecards illegible, the ink bleeding into misshapen stains.

■ ■ ■

Zandra hums to herself while she works on him, upgrading his memory, swapping his components for better, faster ones. Over her shoulder hangs a faded poster: an image of the Milky Way. When Zima isn’t looking at her, he looks at the poster.

■ ■ ■

When Zima is this compact, Zandra can pick him up quite easily, carry him against her chest. Zima’s sensors pick up the heat of her body, the soft beat of her heart through her skin. She drops him, and that clear, familiar water engulfs him momentarily before his buoyancy systems lift him afloat.

He’s supposed to be cleaning the tiles. Instead, he decides to look at his creator where she sits at the pool’s edge, her feet dangling in the water. She’s given him the ability to make his own choices, after all.

■ ■ ■

There is another thing in the world beside the tiles.

Zandra wears protective gloves when she works on her pool cleaner, most of the time. When she switches it on and off, she reaches out to touch the buttons just above its visual sensor. It’s her bare hands it sees when it’s roused from the darkness, when she reaches into the pool to retrieve it, when she pats it proudly and calls it “her little masterpiece.”

■ ■ ■

The tiles are dirty. They must be cleaned, and it is his job to clean them.

The tiles are clean.

The tiles are dirty. They must be cleaned, and it is his job to clean them.

The tiles are clean . . .

■ ■ ■

Zima remembers it all, and the pieces fit together.

He remembers his creator’s brown eyes, her hands and face, her voice, her smile. He remembers the garage-sized laboratory where she loaded his first memory chip. He remembers Palo Alto and that little pool that was once his entire world.

He remembers the truth. His truth.

Now that he remembers, where does he go from here?


End file.
